What shoppers search for in November
These are Australian searches in November 2025, the peak month for each term, from Google Keyword Planner:
- "black friday sales": 823,000
- "black friday": 673,000
- "when is black friday": 450,000
- "black friday deals": 110,000
- "black friday australia": 60,500
Shoppers look up the date and the deals before the day itself. Your products and offer need to be visible when those searches happen, and that starts with the data Google holds about your products.
This week: product feed and Merchant Centre
- Load sale prices properly. Put the discounted price in the sale price attribute and keep sending the full price in the price attribute. Google uses the sale price as the current price and may show the original price next to it.
- Set the sale dates. Add the sale price effective date attribute so the sale price starts and stops on time. Without it, Google applies the sale price straight away.
- Match the website exactly. The sale price in your feed has to match your landing page and checkout. Google asks that the page shows both the normal and the sale price, that checkout shows only the sale price, and that any advertised coupon code works for everyone.
- Submit promotions early. Merchant Centre promotions can show in Australia, and Google reviews every promotion before it appears. The promotion display dates attribute lets you check one before it starts. Free delivery promotions need a coupon code that shoppers enter themselves.
- Clear disapprovals now. Open the products report and fix anything disapproved while there is time for Google to re-check it.
For the full attribute list and common feed errors, see our guide to Google Shopping feeds.
Next week: Google Ads budgets and bidding
Two Google Ads rules shape your spend in a peak week.
- Daily budgets are averages. Google says a campaign can spend up to twice its average daily budget on a given day, and no more than 30.4 times the average daily budget across a month. A busy Friday can use up to double, so set daily budgets with that in mind.
- Seasonality adjustments are for big, short spikes. They tell Smart Bidding to expect a change in conversion rate during a set window. Google suggests using them only when you expect a major change, because Smart Bidding already manages seasonal events. They suit events of 1 to 7 days and may work less well over more than 14 days. They are available for Search, Shopping, Demand Gen and Display campaigns on target ROAS or target CPA, and for Performance Max on any bid strategy. Nothing needs to be reversed afterwards.
In our experience the last week before a sale is the wrong time for a new account structure. Make campaign changes now, then keep the final days for budget and bid tweaks. If you are weighing up Shopping against Performance Max, read our Shopping ads guide and Performance Max vs Search.
Next week: conversion tracking
- Place a test order. GA4's Realtime report shows activity from the last 30 minutes, so you can watch the purchase arrive. Check that the order value matches what you paid.
- Check Google Ads sees the same sale. If the purchase shows in GA4 but not in Google Ads, Smart Bidding is working from incomplete data in the week it matters most.
- Know when the figures settle. Google says GA4 data processing can take 24 to 48 hours and reports may change during that time. Use your store's own order report for a same-day count.
Our ecommerce conversion tracking guide covers the setup in detail.
Next week: site speed
Google's Core Web Vitals set three targets for a good experience: the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, the page responds to a tap or click within 200 milliseconds, and the layout shift score stays at 0.1 or less. Google measures them at the 75th percentile of page loads, with mobile and desktop counted separately.
Test the pages your ads send people to, on a phone. Add sale banners, countdowns and pop-ups before you test, because they are often what slows a page down in sale week. Our website speed fixes lists the usual culprits.
Next week: landing pages and offer clarity
A shopper who clicks a Black Friday ad should understand the offer before they scroll. On each sale page, state:
- the discount and which products it covers
- when the sale starts and ends
- delivery times and any order cut-off
- how returns work for sale items
Check your "was" prices too. The ACCC says a sale price can mislead when it is marked down from an earlier price the item was not sold at for a reasonable period just before the sale. And if the checkout price does not match the displayed price, even by mistake, the ACCC says you must sell at the lower price or stop selling the item until the price is fixed. If a page gets visits but few sales, why a website does not convert has a checklist.
On the day
- Morning: check Merchant Centre for new disapprovals and Google Ads for campaigns limited by budget.
- Through the day: watch GA4 Realtime for purchases, and update stock in your feed as products sell out so you are not paying for clicks on items you cannot ship.
- Evening: write down what sold and which campaigns sold it. That note is your starting point for Cyber Monday on 30 November.
Want a second pair of eyes before the 27th?
We run Google Ads and Shopping for Australian online stores. After its Merchant Centre feed was restructured, SatPhoneShop's Shopping campaigns reached return on ad spend peaks of up to 10x. Six Barrel Soda's Search and Shopping campaigns across Australia and New Zealand reached a 6x return on ad spend.
Individual results vary with market, budget and starting position, and past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Average ROAS varies by industry.
Ask for a free Google Ads audit. Alex Yeldizian goes through your campaign structure, search terms and conversion tracking himself, then shows you where the budget is going and what he would change first, in time for BFCM week.
Sources
- Google Keyword Planner, Australia, monthly searches for November 2025, pulled 11 Nov 2026 (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Merchant Center Help: Sale price [sale_price] (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Merchant Center Help: Promotions data specification (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Ads Help: About overdelivery and your average daily budget (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Ads Help: About seasonality adjustments (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Analytics Help: Realtime report (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- Google Analytics Help: Data freshness (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- web.dev: Web Vitals (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
- ACCC: Price displays (opens in a new tab), checked 11 Nov 2026
How this article was made: Alex Yeldizian researched it and checked every claim against the sources above, with AI helping to organise and summarise the notes. Reviewed on 11 November 2026.
